A/N: As promised, part two of the long overdue update. Not very long, just an extra 10,000 words that felt sort of tacked on to chapter four in any case, but some important stuff happens. At least, important to me, lol. I don't own anything (and I always forget this part so please consider it applicable for everything I post) recognizable, but I do hope you enjoy.
The Serpentine Subterfuge:
Chapter 5:
Her alarm went off at exactly four am, vibrating gently under her pillow to let her know it was time to wake up.
At least, that's what it was supposed to do.
Instead, her wand wriggled its way out from the pillow and promptly jabbed her between her fifth and sixth ribs several times before attempting to bury itself into her ear. Luckily, it was too thick to do so. Unluckily, the uncomfortable feeling—was the tip of her wand wet?—made her yelp with surprise and roll straight onto the floor with a distinctive thump as a result of unconsciously trying to squirm away from it.
She froze, listening for sounds of her roommates stirring. Theo snorted into his pillow, but otherwise didn't move. Draco's hand, which was hanging off the bed, twitched a few times, but he, too, remained fast asleep. From the last bed…oh, no. Was that rustling?
"Rigel?" Blaise's voice whispered across the silent room.
She sighed, it would have to be Blaise who awoke.
"Sorry," she whispered back, "Just fell out of bed. You can go back to sleep."
"Are you not going back to sleep yourself?"
Rigel bit her lip to keep from sighing again, "I can never sleep after I've woken up already. I'll just go read in the common room. Night."
So saying, she crept out of the room in the slightly wrinkled robes she had slept in. She was about to slip out of the door when Blaise appeared beside her.
"Hard to read without a book," he commented.
"You're right," Rigel said, getting annoyed, "I'm not going to read. I'll probably go and have a clandestine meeting with my secret girlfriend from another House instead."
"Just as long as she's not blonde with pigtails," Blaise said lazily.
"Why would—never mind," Rigel muttered, "Goodnight, Blaise."
She opened the door to the hall as quietly as she could, but before she could close it behind her, Blaise stepped out behind her, clad in a forest green dressing gown that probably would have been semi-presentable if his bare feet hadn't been peeking out from underneath the hem.
"Where are you really going?" Blaise asked as they walked out into the common room.
"I'm probably going to keep lying to you if you keep asking," Rigel said, too tired to be delicate about it.
"So it's somewhere you're not supposed to be going," Blaise said, "Smart of you to wait until now, then, when even if you're caught you could feasibly just have woken up really early, and so wouldn't technically be breaking curfew."
In reality, Rigel had been planning on using the Map and cloak that were currently keeping warm in her robe pocket to avoid detection, but she supposed the early hour would be just as good. After all, even Filch stopped patrolling after one am. That was, in fact, why the twins had decided on four am as a good time to set up the prank. Filch wouldn't resume his duties until almost lunch time, which was the only way he was able to afford staying up so late every night at his age.
Still, she couldn't tell Blaise this, so she just shrugged, "If I'm not supposed to be going somewhere, do you really think it's a good idea to tag along?"
Blaise thought about this for a moment, "You don't strike me as someone foolish enough to get caught, and in any case, I think it would be more interesting to follow you than to go back to sleep."
Rigel stopped at the false-wall entrance to the common room and said, "I'm going to help some friends of mine with a prank. That's it. It's going to take at least two hours, and it will be a very tedious and boring process, not to mention if you watch me set the whole thing up you won't get to enjoy it as much with everyone else. Still want to come?"
Blaise looked taken aback at her frank answer.
"What?" Rigel said with amusement, "Did you think I was going to go for a moonlit ride on the back of a thestral? Sorry to disappoint."
Blaise smiled slyly at her, "Ah, but one thing I never am around you is disappointed. Very well, Rigel. Let's go attend to this…prank."
Rigel considered him carefully, "First, please assure me you aren't coming along so that you can turn me or my accomplices, whose names I will not give you, in to Filch."
"If my word means anything to you, consider yourself assured," Blaise said, smiling, "Shall we?"
Rigel led the way out of the common room and through the dungeon corridors. She didn't really want to bring Blaise along, but…it's not like she could actually stop him from coming. For one thing, he was physically stronger than her, and for another, though he might not turn her in, he could easily use the threat of reporting her as leverage to force her to let him come. Really, it was easier and less time-consuming to invite him along, and the odds of him reporting a fellow Slytherin, much less a roommate, were virtually zero.
They walked until they reached the second floor, where Rigel used the directions the twins had given her to find the storage closet they'd left their supplies in. It seemed the twins had already gotten started on their parts, because of the three metal wind chimes Fred was supposed to stash there, there was only one left. She took out the wind chime carefully after casting a silencing charm on it.
"What's that for?" Blaise asked bemusedly.
"You'll see," Rigel said, grinning. She closed the door and started back down toward the first floor. Fred and George hadn't gotten to the second floor yet, but she supposed they were starting from the top. They were responsible for the second through seventh floors, while Rigel would deal with the first floor, the basement, and the dungeons.
When they reached the first floor, Rigel approached the first sconce and held the wind chime up in front of her. She glanced between it and the torch-holder, concentrating hard. Along every corridor in Hogwarts, there were torches, held in place against the stone by sconces. On every sconce, there was a decorative rendition of the Hogwarts crest that dangled like a talisman. After another long look at the wind chime to make sure she'd gotten the correct form in her mind, she pointed her wand at the dangling crest and asked her magic to perform the transfiguration George had spent the better part of three hours teaching her to do.
The next moment, the sconce supported a small metal wind chime, no bigger than a water goblet, which was hastily silenced as soon as it began to flutter in the slight draft of the corridor.
Satisfied, Rigel turned down the hall and walked to the next sconce, Blaise trailing behind her. After the third transfiguration, Blaise asked, incredulously, "Are you going to do this for ever torch bracket in the whole castle?"
Rigel shook her head, "Just the first floor, the basement, and the dungeons. My friends will do the other six levels."
"So you weren't kidding when you said it would be tedious," Blaise said, "Need any help? My transfigurations aren't bad."
"Can you link them?" Rigel asked.
"Can I what them?"
"You can do the silencing charms, if you want," Rigel said, "Not too strong, since they need to wear off before breakfast."
Blaise shook his head wryly, "And you think you're uninteresting? Hardly. All right, I'll silence the chimes as you transfigure them. I don't know if I can do over a hundred silencing charms in a row, though."
"You can stop if you get tired," Rigel said, thinking absently that it was a lot of chimes they were supposed to transfigure. She wondered how Fred and George would manage, but then realized they would probably be fine, being both fourth years and from what she could tell from the brief glance she'd had of their magical cores the night before, pretty powerful themselves.
She and Blaise worked their way from the first floor to the dungeons over the next couple of hours. Even Blaise had to admit the corridors looked pretty cool with all the wind chimes hanging from the torches.
"It'll be a pain to clean up, though," Blaise said, "Here's hoping we don't get caught."
"That's what the linking transfigurations are for," Rigel said, "When a transfiguration is linked to another, whether a regular transformation or a conjuration, then as soon as one of the linked objects is vanished or reverted, the rest follow suit."
"That's…useful," Blaise finally said, "When do we learn those?"
"In a couple of years, probably," Rigel said vaguely, "So as soon as I transfigure one of my chimes back, the rest with revert as well. Same for my accomplices'. It was the only way we could get the house elves to leave the chimes until lunch."
"I see," Blaise said thoughtfully, "And if it doesn't cause caretaker Filch extra work, he's less likely to devote an abnormal amount of effort to rooting out the perpetrators."
"I hadn't think of that," Rigel said, though Fred and George probably had. They seemed to think of everything.
She and Blaise didn't do the whole dungeons, obviously. Instead, they finished the most frequently traveled routes and hurried back to the Slytherin common room to get changed for the day. Rigel came out of the bathroom from showering and changing as Draco and Theo were finishing getting ready for the day as well. They headed to breakfast with the other second years just as the silencing charms on the chimes in the dungeons were beginning to wear off.
As they walked, one by one the chimes dangling from the torch brackets were set into motion by the displaced air. Soft, tinkling sound echoed through the corridors, bouncing off the walls and mingling beautifully with the sound of the next chime, and the next, and the next.
Pansy gasped and pressed her hands together, beaming, "Oh, what a clever idea! Putting chimes in the dungeons is sure to liven them up a little."
As they ascended the stairs to the Entrance Hall, however, it became apparent to the rest that the chimes went much further than the dungeons. Everyone was talking about it as they took their places at the tables.
"Joanna from Ravenclaw says they're even in the four main towers," one fifth year was telling his friend, "The only place they haven't been found is inside the classrooms themselves and in the Owlrey—good thing, too, as I don't expect the birds would appreciate the sound like we do."
"Imagine how much effort it must have been," Theo commented, "It can't have been one person who did all this overnight."
"They wouldn't have even had the night," Blaise said, an amused gleam in his eyes that Rigel hoped no one else caught on to, "After all, the prefects and teachers patrol until one or two am, not to mention Filch's rounds."
"It would have taken half a dozen people at least to transfigure them all before anyone woke up this morning," Pansy said thoughtfully, "I wonder who would do such a thing?"
"Someone with too much free time," Draco said dryly, "Still, it's made the morning much more interesting than it would have been otherwise."
"Do you think the teachers will take them down?" Theo asked, "They don't seem too upset about it."
Indeed, the teachers appeared to be animatedly discussing the prank (well, most of the teachers), but none of them looked particularly angry.
"The chimes aren't that loud," Millicent pointed out, "And as long as they aren't in the classrooms themselves, they can barely be considered disruptive. I bet they'll leave them for the house elves to put away."
"But if the house elves were going to get rid of them, wouldn't they have already done so?" Pansy said, "They're very efficient, usually."
"Maybe they were bribed," Blaise said innocently.
"Bribe a house elf?" Theo snorted, "With what, more work?"
"Do you think it was your friends the Weasley twins, Rigel?" Pansy asked.
Rigel was saved from having to answer by a letter being dropped onto her plate. It was from Archie. It wasn't coded as sensitive, so she slit it open at the table and began to read.
Dear Rigel,
How's term going so far? I hope you're not learning as much as I am, because I feel a bit overwhelmed by how quickly our professors here are pushing us into the deep end. Last week we learned how to repair shattered joints, and the method is a bit tricky, so I've enclosed a copy of my notes to help you, as the textbook is fair useless on this one.
Hermione was surprised by how different I looked after a summer away, but none of my other friends seemed to notice. Mione's always been very observant, though. Do you have any friends like that? Ones you just can't get anything by? They're great to have on your side, but don't ever try to pretend you did your homework if you didn't—it won't work!
I received some very interesting news about my mum this morning, so I thought I'd shoot you a letter right away. Be on the lookout for news from Sirius, because I think they were going to tell you next. I hope you're as surprised as I was, and to ensure that you are, I'm not giving you any hints.
Also, I think someone I met at work this summer misses me, because I heard there was someone asking about me around school, and I'm told the man definitely had an English accent, though it was apparently quite uncouth. No one's approached me directly, though, so I guess my new friend is shy.
Anyway, I hope you're doing well. I heard from Uncle Sirius you tried out for the Quidditch team—do let me know how that works out. You'll also find my new syllabus for the year in the envelope, so send me yours right away so we can compare.
All the best,
Harry
Rigel picked up the envelope to look for the extra pages, but it was empty. Frowning, she glanced around to see if it had fallen out somewhere, and found Draco looking over the handwritten notes curiously while Pansy tried discretely to get him to put them back.
"Um, Draco?" Rigel looked at the notes in his hand pointedly, "Can I have those back?"
Draco looked up, not one iota of guilt on his face, "Yeah, in a second. This is interesting. Did your cousin send it?"
"Yes," Rigel said, "Those are her notes on one of the Healing lessons she found particularly difficult."
"Yes," Draco mused, "It looks like a process for repairing joints that have been severely traumatized. Why'd she send it to you?"
"I'm interested in Healing," Rigel said casually, "I learn what I can on my own, and Harry is kind enough to send me her syllabus and some of the more difficult notes so that I can keep up with her curriculum when I have time."
Draco stared at her and even Pansy seemed a bit surprised.
"Just how much school work do you do, Rye?" Draco shook his head sadly, "It's like you're allergic to free time, so you fill it with all these things you don't have to do. Learning Healing. Studying Occlumency and extra Potions lessons and reading up on fifth and sixth year material—don't think I haven't noticed. Then there's the brewing you do for no apparent reason in the evenings, and you get up at the crack of dawn every morning for some reason I haven't been able to fathom yet, wearing absolutely hideous clothes, and—and—don't you ever just take a break?"
"That's why I joined the Quidditch team," Rigel said sweetly, "I'm sure that will be very relaxing."
Draco groaned, "I forgot you'll even have Quidditch practices to deal with now. You're going to run yourself into the ground!"
Rigel shook her head, "You make it sound like I'm doing everything separately. I can multi-task a lot of it. I do most of my regular schoolwork during class when everyone else is practicing the spells. I read up on material I'm interested in, like Healing, advanced Transfigurations, Occlumency and the like during my boring classes, like History, and during my breaks. That covers the middle part of my day, and in the evenings I brew, which is a good opportunity to study because of the down time required as a lot of potions simmer, and in the mornings I workout. I get my eight hours of sleep, and all my meals, and I'll be even more physically active when Quidditch starts. Over all, I'd say my lifestyle is pretty healthy."
Pansy pursed her lips, "That's just it, though, Rigel. You've been skipping lunch several days a week lately. And how can you be getting enough sleep if you both stay up late and get up early?"
"I'm not skipping lunch," Rigel said, thinking of pleasant hours spent learning French from Binny. She was really making good progress on her conversational understanding of the language, though she couldn't spell it to save her life, "I always grab lunch from the kitchens those days while I'm studying. I just don't have time to come to the Great Hall. And I don't stay up that late."
"That's where you go every morning?" Draco asked, frowning, "Running? Well, that explains the clothes…and the smell when you come back, actually."
"Excuse me for sweating," Rigel rolled her eyes, "I need the exercise."
"Not with Quidditch starting up," Draco said.
"It's not the same type of exercise," Rigel argued, "Quidditch is good cardio, but I'm working on strength training, too."
"We just don't want you to over work yourself," Pansy said softly, "You have to admit you have a tendency toward doing so, if the result seems to outweigh fatigue in your mind."
Rigel smiled, "I have such good friends. Tell you what, as soon as you think I'm excessively tired, sick, or in some other way overdoing it, let me know and I'll listen, okay? As long as I'm healthy, though, I'll just continue with what I'm doing."
They didn't look happy about it, but there wasn't really anything for them to say after that. Rigel was grateful for their silence. She didn't need to be watched over like she was self-destructive, and the closer they watched her the more likely it was that they would pick up on something she didn't want them to. Yes, her life was busy, but she was handling it just fine. Besides, most of the things she did were completely necessary in a way that Draco and Pansy, who didn't know she and Archie's situation, couldn't possibly understand. So, really, what did they know?
[HpHpHp]
As September bled into October, nothing really changed, unless one counted the autumn leaves, but considering how many leaves there were on the Hogwarts grounds, Rigel couldn't imagine anyone wanting to actually count them.
She went through her classes like clockwork, completing assignments and learning magic at an almost abysmally slow pace. Luckily, Rigel had extracurricular studies to keep her mind occupied. As for her body, it was occupied as well—in Quidditch practices. Flint, it turned out, was not at all exaggerated by his reputation. In fact, he seemed to be quite a bit more harshly critical and ruthlessly ambitious in his expectations than the rumors had made him out to be. At least, that's how it seemed from Rigel's point of view, which was, admittedly, often clouded by fog, dirt, rain, muck produced by the combination of dirt and rain, and occasionally an actual blindfold when Flint was experiencing one of his particularly creative phases.
Still, getting to fly all the time, no matter how absurd and demeaning the conditions, certainly kept her happy, so with mind, body, and soul thus satiated, Rigel began October with a transcendent sort of peace.
It was at that point, of course, that something had to go wrong.
She had been conscripted into another of the Weasley twins' brilliant pranks, and although she did enjoy hanging out with the duo, and she did want to start establishing Rigel Black's reputation as a prankster, this particular prank was much more tedious than most.
It was based on a muggle Christmas tradition, and basically it was a prank that slowly but inexorably drew everyone in the castle into its game. At first, no one even knew it was a prank. The twins had transfigured a spool of thread into a wooden puppet with a pointed wizard hat and a wide grin on its blank wooden face. The puppet had then been placed quite randomly in an alcove just off the Great Hall, positioned so that the puppet's head, with its shock of red hair jutting out from under its hat, was just visible peeking out into the corridor. Only a couple of people noticed the poor, forgotten puppet that day, and the next day the puppet was moved to another innocuous location—perched on the railway to the Astronomy tower stairs.
It took nearly a full week for people to start noticing the puppet more. Each day the puppet was somewhere different, and as people mentioned the peculiarity to their friends and compared notes they realized that someone was doing it on purpose.
After that, it became a game to see who could find the puppet first when it was moved the next morning. People began carrying around cameras and film-developing potion, so that if they came across the puppet they could capture evidence. The more serious competitors all included some sort of time stamp—a watch or the tempus spell visible in the picture—and someone, probably Fred or George, had started a bulletin board in the Great Hall where students could post their pictures each day and figure out who'd won.
The Headmaster seemed to delight in the game, and a couple of the photos showed a pajama-clad Dumbledore happily shaking the puppet's wooden hand at some absurdly early hour of the morning. Because of this, or perhaps because none of the teachers really cared that much, the bulletin board became a permanent fixture over the next few weeks, and impromptu prizes were arranged by the more indulgent school prefects for whoever found the puppet first each day.
What was for the rest of the school a mildly interesting entertainment or a fun and engaging diversion was for Rigel a complete drain on her time in the mornings. The twins had all but handed the prank over to her after giving her the initial model for the puppet, saying that it was a good chance for her to spread her prank-making wings.
She was not, of course, retrieving the puppet each day and moving it before anyone else woke up. That was a good way to get caught—after all, Filch, the professors, or even one of the more enthusiastic students would have only had to wait around at night where the puppet was for her to come get it. Instead, the original puppet was given to the house elves to hide away once Rigel had gotten its appearance memorized, and Woody—as he was affectionately, if rather unimaginatively, called by the student population—was now nothing more than a conditional transfiguration.
Conditional transfigurations were pretty much exactly what they sounded like. The transfiguration was dependent upon one or more conditions pre-determined by the castor at the time the spell was cast. A condition could be anything. It could be as simple as a time limit after which the transfiguration automatically reversed or as complicated as a series of very specific actions that must be completed before the transfiguration reversed. Percy had told Rigel that McGonagall had claimed one could perform a conditional transfiguration so complicated that transfigured objects behaved more like animated objects, responding to any number of external stimuli depending upon the conditions set.
Rigel wasn't doing anything like that, of course, but the prank wasn't exactly a boat ride across the Black Lake either. Woody was set every morning at 4:30 am, and 24 hours later the transfiguration was conditioned to wear off. Then, whatever mundane object had been used in the transfiguration would be abandoned where it fell. For this reason, Rigel had to be extremely careful not to let any of the objects used to base the transfiguration off of reveal anything about herself. She didn't choose anything lying around the Slytherin common room, and she also was very carefully to avoid shedding hairs around the scene of the 'crime' in case some wise guy picked one up and tested it with Polyjuice potion. She also had to make sure she was ready every morning at 4:30 to transfigure something else into Woody the minute the old transfiguration wore off.
Luckily, her roommates were used to her getting up early, and she could perform the transfiguration on her way outside to work out, so she had a semi-plausible alibi as long as she wasn't caught somewhere too outlandish.
On the second Thursday in October, Rigel had just about used up her ideas for places to put the puppet. She couldn't re-use old hiding places, obviously, and it had to be somewhere that wasn't obvious, but which could be found with a little effort. That morning she decided that since the day before she'd put Woody in the boy's locker room down at the Quidditch pitch, she should put it somewhere girls frequented, to make it fair. Unfortunately, if she were caught sneaking in or out of a girl's bathroom as Rigel, there would be questions that no amount of prevarication could answer.
So that day Rigel had on the blonde wig that she had once rescued from the lost and found, as well as the glasses she often wore in her 'Gryffindor' disguise at the Library. She had changed into a Hufflepuff tie and kept her head down as she hurried down the third floor corridor toward the girls' lavatory. In truth, she didn't feel very guilty about sneaking into the girls' bathroom, mostly because she was, in fact, a girl, and therefore wasn't doing anything nefarious. She did, however, realize what it would look like if anyone recognized her, and it was this knowledge that added a slight pink tint to her cheeks as she slipped into the bathroom.
There was no one inside, of course, because it was so early in the day, so Rigel made quick work of transfiguring a spare roll of toilet paper into Woody. She positioned the puppet so that he was sitting cross-legged on one of the lowered toilet seats, with one hand up under his chin, as though the puppet were thinking very hard about something.
Smiling with soft amusement, she slipped out of the bathroom once more and nearly jumped out of her skin when a jovial voice said, "Why hello there!"
Rigel whirled around, one hand clutching at her heart with exaggerated surprise, and said, "Oh! Professor Lockhart. Good morning."
Lockhart beamed cheerfully down at her. He was already dressed for the day in a deep orange overcoat with silver pumpkins on the trimming and a hint of lace peeking out from the collar of the shirt beneath. "Fancy meeting a student up and about so early," he said grandly, "Of course, when I was a youth I was always among the first to start the day, but children nowadays…well…you can't blame them. They just don't know how serious a world it really is. But it is so wonderful to see a young person like yourself already prepared to face the day."
"Thank you," Rigel said uncertainly.
"So where are you off to, young miss?" Lockhart asked curiously.
For a moment, her mind blanked completely. What could she say? She couldn't say she was going to work out, because that was something Rigel Black did every day, not some no-name Hufflepuff girl who didn't exist. As Lockhart began to frown, she realized she'd taken too long thinking about it and blurted out, "Using the bathroom."
Lockhart's eyebrows rose, "Yes, well, I assumed so considering…" he glanced delicately at the bathroom door behind her, "Awful long way to walk from the Hufflepuff dorms just to use the bathroom, though. In fact…it's a bit…strange. Isn't it?"
"Oh, um," Rigel fumbled, and cursed herself for being so stupid. If she got caught by Lockhart of all people she would never forgive herself. It was just so early, and although her body was used to working this early in the morning, her mind was still half asleep, "I didn't come up here just to use the lavatory, of course, I just meant…that was my immediate intention in being here…" she trailed off, having successfully made herself sound even more idiotic than before.
Even Lockhart seemed to notice. He peered at her shrewdly, then glanced back at the bathroom, then checked the time in his watch and gasped in an exaggerated manner that made Rigel a bit queasy about what it meant for her.
"A-ha! But of course, I suspected something like this," Lockhart smiled cheekily down at her with a twinkle to his eye, "A student wandering around at just a few minutes after 4:30 in the morning? Don't think I haven't heard Filch complaining about how the puppet disappears every day at this time," he wagged a finger at her playfully and she internally groaned. Lockhart stepped behind her and made a show of knocking on the door to the girl's bathroom loudly, calling, "Anyone in there? No? Let's go check it out, then, shall we?" He clamped a hand on her shoulder and was about to steer her into the bathroom when a second voice made the both of them freeze. Lockhart with surprise, and Rigel with horror. Oh, no. Not him. And yet, it was.
"Pray tell, Professor Lockhart, just what you intend to do after manhandling that student into the female lavatory?" Professor Snape's voice was nearly a growl, low and dangerous, and Rigel was close enough to hear Lockhart gulp with trepidation before turning around to face the Potions Master.
"I say, Severus, this really isn't…that is, the situation isn't how it might appear…" Lockhart looked at quite a loss for words, the hand he still had on Rigel's shoulder starting to shake nervously.
Suddenly realizing what Snape must think to see Lockhart pushing a young girl into the girl's bathroom at 4:30 am with no one around, Rigel had the completely inappropriate impulse to laugh. It was just so absurd, not least because she was a girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl, and she was sure that boy or girl Lockhart really hadn't meant anything like that. He was an idiot, but probably not a pedophile. She bit her tongue to keep from smiling, and concentrated on looking at the floor. With any luck, Lockhart and Snape would focus on each other and not on her.
Snape sneered at Lockhart, "Do explain, then, what business a teacher could have with a student in an out of the way lavatory at this hour of the morning."
Lockhart laughed weakly, "Well, you see, I was just…the puppet, I mean, going to check if…yes, well…"
Snape, somehow, made enough sense of Lockhart's mutterings to glean a basic understanding of the situation. He whipped out his wand and cast, "Homenum revelio," at the girls' restroom. When nothing happened, he stowed his wand away and strode briskly into the bathroom, somehow not looking at all foolish doing so. A moment later, he had come back out, and he spared Rigel a quick glance before saying to Lockhart, "Congratulations, Gilderoy. It seems once again your gift for sniffing out mysteries has reared its head; you've caught the student responsible for the ongoing puppet prank."
In a flash, Lockhart was back to his usual self, "I did have a feeling, and like I always say, it pays to follow your gut. Still, it was rather clever to get so far without being caught, Miss…, forgive me, Miss, but I don't seem to recall your name. Still learning all the students, you know."
"Am I going to get into trouble, Professors?" Rigel asked softly, pitching her voice a little higher than normal and not looking up from the stones, "Only, I wasn't hurting anyone. It's just a bit of fun, and it's not really against school rules to practice transfiguration outside of the classroom, as long as one doesn't perform the magic in the corridors."
Lockhart chortled, "Oh-ho! She's got a point, Severus, you must admit. I suppose since no harm was done, there's no reason to—"
"Thank you, Gilderoy," Severus said sharply, "I will oversee the situation from here. You, come with me." Rigel did not have to look up to know that he was referring to her. Snape strode off toward the stairs and Lockhart gave her a commiserating pat on the back before she slowly set off after the Potions Master.
Snape continued to walk briskly until they reached his office in the dungeons, at which point he took out his wand to remove the wards and then gestured impatiently for her to proceed him. Rigel meekly slipped into the office. She kept her blonde head down, trying to project an appearance of timidity and contrition.
Snape shut the door with a firm click and stalked over to sit behind his desk. At the sight of her standing there, one toe fidgeting against the flagstones, he scoffed impatiently, "Enough, Mr. Black. Take that ridiculous thing off and explain yourself this instant."
Rigel couldn't hide the shock on her face as she whipped her head up to stare at him. "How did you know?" she blurted, "You barely looked at me."
"I did not need to look at you," Snape said dismissively, "Have you forgotten Mr. Malfoy's birthday party already? You are the only student at this school with no discernable magical aura. Not to mention my familiarity with your Occlumency shields, and the fact that unlike Professor Lockhart I do know every student in this school and was able to recognize the duplicity by simple process of elimination."
Rigel winced. She hadn't thought of that, though she should have. She reached up and slid the wig off of her hair slowly, blatantly stalling for time as she put it away in her bag. Snape sent a very pointed look at the yellow and black striped tie around her neck, and Rigel quickly took the Hufflepuff tie off as well, trying not to feel amused at the put out expression of distaste on his face.
"I suppose you'd like an explanation now," Rigel said hesitantly.
"I would," Snape said flatly, "Starting with where you got that ridiculous disguise and ending with why you were about to willingly enter a female lavatory with a member of the male staff."
Rigel thought 'willingly' was a bit of a stretch, but decided to just get the explanation over with instead of commenting, "The disguise was originally for my use in the Library." At Snape's raised eyebrow, she clarified, "It would seem that Madam Pince harbors some ill will toward me because of my father's…colorful history with the Hogwarts Library. Something about catching an entire section of the place on fire."
For a moment, Snape almost looked amused, in a darkly satisfied sort of way, and Rigel got the uneasy feeling that he'd been involved in the Library incident.
"Because of that, she banned me from the Library the first week I started here," Rigel went on, sighing, "It's really been a pain, considering how often I use the Library, but with my disguises I can at least go and read books there, though I still can't check any books out. Anyway, that's what the disguise is supposed to be for. This morning, I didn't go to the Library, though," Rigel examined the desk carefully as she admitted to the rest of it, "I was using the disguise so that my going into the girls' bathroom wouldn't seem so suspicious, although now that I've been caught it seems more suspicious that I wore a disguise, I suppose."
Snape gave a sardonic lift of the brow that Rigel thought was roughly equivalent to an unspoken, You think?
"I wasn't doing anything…nefarious," Rigel felt compelled to add, "I would never try anything so unsavory, Professor. I had to put the puppet somewhere girls went, though, since yesterday it was in the boys' locker room."
Professor Snape didn't say anything, merely looked at her with a shuttered expression.
"I'm sorry," Rigel offered, "I know I probably embarrassed Slytherin House, even if Professor Lockhart had no idea who I was. I am also sorry for going into the girls' bathroom, but I did check if anyone was in there first, and I didn't think it would be an issue so early in the morning."
"And the puppet?" Snape prompted, "What have you to say about that, Mr. Black?"
"Well, I know it's a bit silly," Rigel said carefully, "But it doesn't in itself break any rules, does it?"
Snape scowled at her, "Just a bit of fun, was it? You think you can become a Potions Master before you're thirty by wasting your time with nonsense like this? You said you were focused, Mr. Black. You swore to me there was nothing you wanted more than this."
"There isn't! I am," Rigel said vehemently, "It's just a prank. It means nothing, and it hardly takes up any of my time. Are my studies lacking? Did you have any inkling that I might be distracted before you caught me with this?"
"That is not the point," Snape said, frowning, "This isn't the Rigel Black I know. Where is the boy that doesn't care for frivolities that distract him from his studies? I know you are not the mastermind behind this scheme, but why would you even agree to participate in it? Do not think that going along with others is enough to make them true friends—"
"It's nothing like that," Rigel said quickly, "I have too many friends as it is. I don't want any more."
"Then why did you get involved with this farce? What could you possibly gain from engaging in such a pointless, wasteful application of your talents for the sole purpose of cruel entertainment at others' expense? I thought you were better than that, Rigel Black."
"I am," Rigel said, frustrated with the way Snape was painting things, "I'd never do anything mean to anyone. The puppet is completely harmless—it's not even a prank, really. It's not a big deal."
"But you've just said yourself it doesn't mean anything to you," Snape said exasperatedly, "Why, then, would you do it? You have defended your actions but have yet to give a plausible motive for them. Am I to assume you perform random acts of tom foolery for no reason?"
Rigel shook her head, "It doesn't mean anything to me, sir, but it means something to…others."
Snape favored her with a pointed look, "While I do not question your character, Mr. Black, you have never struck me as a particularly altruistic person—at least not one who would go out of his way for the sole purpose of cheering up his peers when they have no need for such a diversion."
"It's not them, exactly," Rigel said, internally squirming. How could she explain in a way that didn't sound pathetic? "Professor, you have to understand, I…my family is really big on pranks. I know I don't have to tell you that," she hurried on, seeing his face darken, "It's just that you're right, okay? I'm not all that interested in them, but…I sort of have to be. If I don't, my dad will worry about me. Well, not worry about me, exactly, but I've always been different than my family expected or maybe hoped. It's already a lot for my dad that I enjoy potions and book learning so much, and I don't want to…"
"Disappoint him," Snape finished, sounding as though he had finally obtained something that had long eluded him, only to find he didn't care for the feel of it in his grasp. Rigel snuck a look at him, but his face was blank and unreadable, "Tell me, Mr. Black, is your father aware of exactly how closely you are studying potions under my tutelage? Does he have any idea that I am training you, specifically, outside of the regular student curriculum?"
Rigel felt her stomach sink pitifully, "Not exactly, sir. No, actually, not at all."
Snape gazed at her wordlessly, which somehow felt worse than if he'd shouted. "Are you ashamed, perhaps, to be working with me? Are you somehow embarrassed to be given this opportunity that other young potioneers would go down on bended knee for?"
"No," Rigel protested, "I'm grateful, you have no idea—you can't imagine how—I just can't tell them. Not my family, they wouldn't understand. It would only cause problems and…and I cause them enough problems as it is."
"So what is your plan, exactly?" Snape asked coolly, "Do you intend to hide the extent of your studies from them forever?"
Yes, Rigel thought stubbornly, I do. She didn't say so, but Snape must have seen the answer shining below the surface of her expression.
"Foolish boy," Snape snapped, "You cannot pretend to idiocy all your life."
"I'm not," Rigel said, "I'm just not saying how I'm learning, exactly." She winced, realizing what that sounded like, "It's not that I don't want to give you credit—I do. I will, just not until I graduate and get my Mastery. If they knew what I was doing before then, even without your name throw into it, I wouldn't be able to realize my goals."
Snape scoffed, "Even I do not think your father so childish as to deny his own son happiness out of spite. Such a thing is beneath Gryffindors, after all."
Rigel shook her head slowly, "You don't have all the facts, and I cannot provide them to you, but believe me when I say that if my family found out the truth before I graduated, they would pull me out of Hogwarts so fast it would be as though Rigel Black never existed."
Snape sat back in his chair hard, a look of thinly veiled shock on his face at that pronouncement, "It is obvious that you believe this, so perhaps there is some amount of truth to what you say," he said slowly, "This development is disturbing, though it does explain certain things about you I had dismissed as idiosyncrasies. Nevertheless, I do not see how this double-sided game you are playing can continue for much longer. At the end of this year you will be expected to consider electives for your OWL classes, and as such to have some idea as to a future career path. What does your father expect you to do with your life if not potions?"
"I have intimated a desire to become a Healer," Rigel said carefully, trying to mesh her own and Archie's ambitions in a way that didn't leave too many holes in their story, "A lot of Healing has to do with potions, so skill with and interest in the subject lends itself easily to the field. In fact, at times I have considered actually becoming a Healer after I get my Potions Mastery. It would be a way to do a great amount of good with my training, at least."
Snape considered this for a moment, "Even if you became a Healer after first becoming a Potions Master, you would still need to begin training in the subject now. It would mean extra work, but if your plans are truly as you say, perhaps it would be best if I were to arrange something with Madam Pomphrey after your regular lessons. She can begin teaching you the basics, if nothing else."
"My cousin Harry attends school in America," Rigel said, slightly surprised that Snape was willing to arrange extra lessons for her simply because she said she might want to become a Healer one day, "She is actually studying Healing there, precisely because she knows I need to learn it both to convince our family it is my primary area of focus, and in the event that I do decide on becoming a Healer."
Snape's eyebrows rose even higher, "You have already begun studying Healing? That is a dangerous discipline to attempt to self-learn. How far have you progressed?"
Rigel shrugged, "I'm about at the same level as Harry is. We keep pace with one another's curriculums pretty easily—"
"One another's?" Snape broke in, frowning.
Rigel clamped her mouth shut. She shouldn't have said that…or wait…maybe that would make the most sense in the end? When they switched back how better to explain how she had Archie's knowledge and he had hers than to simply say that they'd taught one another everything they learned? It was even true, only in reverse of what people would think. Still, how could she tell Snape that without making it seem as though she was sharing the knowledge he had entrusted to only her with someone he'd never met? Because of course she wasn't, but in the end Harriett Potter's knowledge would seem to come from nowhere unless Rigel Black had shared it with her. Her parents could believe she'd self studied all her knowledge, but to other potioneers it would be obvious she had been trained somehow—after all, some of the things she would know simply weren't written down. They were passed in trust from master to apprentice, and wasn't that the cincher? Trust. Snape had trusted her with his teachings, and she was metaphorically (and in his eyes literally) betraying his knowledge to another.
Perhaps it wasn't so dramatic. He hadn't really imparted any significant secrets yet, had he? Maybe he wouldn't be irate over the technicalities of the situation.
Realizing she'd once again been silent too long in contemplation, Rigel said, "Yes. It would have been natural for me to go to AIM to learn Healing, but luckily my father insisted I attend Hogwarts, so I was able to come here to study potions without it being obvious I'd chosen one over the other. My cousin, on the other hand, wanted to come to Hogwarts as well, as she had a very similar interest in potions, but couldn't, of course, so since she was going to AIM anyway, she started in the Healing tract to help me out. The potions tract at AIM isn't all that impressive, so since the Healing tract is quite good, she's learning something useful in any case."
Snape was rubbing his temples now, "You have once again managed to somehow completely complicate what should have been straightforward. Am I to understand that you are here to learn potions, but your family thinks you are here against your will because they think you'd rather be in America learning Healing, and that your cousin actually is in America against her will, and so decided to learn Healing for you by proxy to help your possibly-fake future career path along, and in return you…what? Tutor her in the things you learn at Hogwarts?"
"Ah, yes?" Rigel said, now a bit confused herself, "That sounds right. Only, I suppose I should ask if it would be okay with you if I taught her some…er, a lot, of what you teach me about potions? Only she's a big fan of yours, and will probably decide to take the Potions Mastery exam herself at some point."
This, it appeared, was too much for Snape's rational mind to comprehend. He positively gaped at her with bemusement, "Harriett Potter, child of James Potter, is a…fan...of my work?"
Rigel hid a smile, "Yes, sir. She was ever so disappointed to be going to AIM, which in her words has not seen the light of a potions periodical in nearly a decade."
Snape snorted seemingly involuntarily, but quickly pulled himself together, "You have given me a lot to process, as usual, Mr. Black. For now, you will be receiving a detention on Friday for entering the women's lavatory. I will speak to Madam Pince personally and ensure that you never have need of so ridiculous a disguise again. Then I will see Madam Pomphrey and attempt to work out a couple of days a week for her to at the very least supervise you so that you do not inadvertently kill yourself trying to learn Healing on your own."
"Thank you, sir," Rigel said, really meaning it for all that he'd done for her.
"Next, I want your word that whatever I teach you goes no further than Miss Potter," Snape said, his neutral tone belying the weight of the words he was speaking, "If you vouch for her skill, then I am sure she is not completely incompetent, though at some point you will arrange a meeting so that I may assess that for myself, and you and I will be having a much more in depth conversation about what exactly you and your cousin are doing with your lives. For now, however, we are overdue for breakfast. Do you have any immediate questions?"
"Who is my detention with on Friday?" Rigel asked.
Snape sighed, an annoyed but resigned sound, "Me. We might as well make use of the time, and I have a vague suspicion that you wouldn't respond to normal disciplinary actions even if I were to set you to clean cauldrons all night."
"I like cleaning cauldrons," Rigel said.
"And I have reached the point where nothing surprises me about you anymore," Snape said tiredly, "Go to breakfast, Mr. Black, and if I ever catch you entering a women's bathroom again, with or without a teacher, I will excommunicate you from Slytherin House faster than you can say Salazar."
[HpHpHp]
After that, Rigel was more careful in any pranks she got involved in with the twins, and Professor Snape seemed to have decided to look the other way where her extra curricular antics were involved. He did convince Madam Pomphrey to meet with Rigel once every two weeks to assess her progress and correct any mistakes she was making, but for the most part her Healing studies continued under her own steam.
The best thing that came out of her conversation with Snape was the access she now had to the Library. Madam Pince hadn't said a word when Rigel went as herself the first time, and after a couple of weeks she didn't even give Rigel the evil eye when she checked out a book. It probably helped that she always returned them timely and with no visible signs of wear.
The day before Halloween, however, she was vastly disappointed in the Library. She had an essay to do for Flint's NEWT Runes class, and it was reaching the point where she could no longer get by with mere theory on the essays. It wasn't that the Library didn't have the information she needed to complete the essay, rather, it was that Rigel couldn't make any useful sense of the information. She didn't have enough of a foundation to go any further in the theoretical study of Runes without backtracking and learning everything from the beginning. Unfortunately, she also didn't have time to do that before the next essay was due.
Since books weren't helping her, she needed to find a person who could. Percy took Runes, but she doubted he'd be able to swallow her wanting to add sixth year Runes to their transfiguration studies. Flint would probably know everything she needed, but somehow she didn't see him helping her complete his own homework assignment, even if it would make things easier.
Alesana Selwyn also knew Runes, or at least how to read them, which probably implied some knowledge of their application, but Rigel got the feeling Selwyn was still a bit touchy about the thestral thing from the beginning of the school year. She also wasn't eager to owe Selwyn any favors—who knew what she'd ask in return?
That left a total of zero people she knew who were taking Runes. Great.
Rigel shelved the useless books on Runic theory carefully and headed back toward the common room. Surely there was someone in Slytherin House who knew a thing or two about Runes…and didn't mind talking to younger students…and wasn't terribly suspicious. Rigel sighed. Anyone not smart enough to be suspicious wouldn't be smart enough to answer her questions. Still, it was more productive than staring blankly at a book of gibberish.
She had barely gotten through the common room wall when she was waylaid by a nervous looking Millicent.
"Hi, Rigel," she said, holding a notebook on one hand and tapping the fingers of her other hand against her leg.
"Hello, Millicent," Rigel said, "What are you up to?"
"Potions homework," Millicent said immediately, "And it's really hard."
"Oh," Rigel said, blinking, "I'm sorry to hear that."
Millicent hesitated, peering at Rigel as though searching for some clue. Rigel stared blankly back at her, not sure what she wanted, so Millicent just sighed and said, "Will you help me with my potions homework, Rigel?"
"Oh," Rigel said, smiling slightly, "Sure."
"Well—" the other girl paused, "Wait, just like that? You'll really help?"
Rigel raised an eyebrow, "Of course I will. Why wouldn't I? We're friends."
Millicent shrugged, "Well, yes, but you never have before."
Rigel frowned, "You never asked me before."
Millicent stared at her for a second, then said, slowly, "That's true, but the rest of us do almost all of our homework together. Since you never joined, I figured you weren't interested in peer tutoring, at least not giving it out."
"I didn't know," Rigel said, wondering how long that had been going on. Draco and Pansy almost never asked for her help with anything, so she'd assumed they were either too proud to ask or were too smart to need help. She didn't do her homework around her friends for obvious reasons—if they kept careful enough tabs on her homework load, it would be obvious she was either doing more than twice as much as the rest of them, half of which was on topics they wouldn't cover for years, or else lying when she said she had more homework to do after she'd finished all of her 'official' homework. Maybe she'd been missing out on more than just homework help, though.
"Well, you're always really busy, I guess," Millicent said uneasily, "Anyway, you can come now, right?"
Rigel mentally shrugged. She wasn't making any headway with Flint's essay anyway, so why not? "Sure, now is good for me."
"Great, thanks," Millicent led her over to a secluded corner of the common room where the second year Slytherins did indeed seem to be gathered around a table, comparing various homework notes. She never would have noticed them if she was just casually walking through the common room, but when Millicent pulled two empty chairs for them the others looked up. When they saw Rigel, several of her year mates did a double take.
"Rigel!" Theo exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"
Pansy nudged him admonishingly with her shoulder, "Don't say it like that. Hello, Rigel. How's your afternoon coming along?"
"Well enough, Pansy, thank you," Rigel said, sitting down next to Millicent, "Good to see you, too, Theo."
"I guess I owe Millie a sickle," Theo said, ignoring her muttered 'don't call me that' in favor of grinning unrepentantly, "I bet her you'd be too busy to come over."
Rigel wasn't sure how to respond to that. Did she really come off so aloof to her classmates?
"And you owe me two sickles," Blaise added with a satisfied smile, "Because I bet you that as soon as someone actually made him aware of our little group, he'd be perfectly amiable to joining in."
"How could he not know?" Theo rolled his eyes, "We've only been sitting here practically every school night for the last month and a half."
"Rigel doesn't notice anything," Blaise said, as though it were common knowledge, "Do you, Rigel?"
Rigel shrugged, wanting to say, I notice how often you stare at Hannah Abbott, but knowing better than to be so rude. Instead she took a seat and pulled Millicent's homework assignment toward her.
"Swelling Solution?" Rigel guessed, glancing over the ingredient list.
"Just the theory," Millicent said, "We don't have to brew it until after Halloween, but one of the homework questions asks how many times you stir counter-clockwise after adding the bat spleen. One book says three and the other says four, but our textbook just says, 'stir counter-clockwise twice-proportionately to the solute.' What does that even mean?"
Rigel tilted her head to the side to consider the question, "Well, off the top of my head I'd say it's supposed to be four stirs counter-clockwise after the bat spleen for the textbook recipe, but Professor Snape will definitely want to know why, so I guess you'd better explain the reasoning behind the number of stirs if you want full marks."
"Okay, but why did the other book say three sirs?" Millicent asked.
"Well it could either have been written by an idiot, or the recipe just makes less of the potion. Not all potion recipes are standard. Does the recipe given in that book call for a different amount of solute?" Rigel asked.
Millicent scrunched up her nose, "What's a solute?"
"It's just a word for the stuff that dissolves into the liquid part of the potion," Rigel said, "You have to crush puffer-fish eyes and dried nettles into powder for this one, right? That's probably the solute they're talking about."
Millicent ran a finger down the ingredient list in one of the books, "Oh. Yes, it says one and a half measures of the powdered stuff, and our book calls for two measures. Oh, I see. So you stir twice as many times as the number of measures you put in. That's what it means by proportionate." She scowled a bit grumpily at the book as she wrote down the answer in the neat, flowing handwriting that all pureblooded heirs seemed to posses, "Why didn't they just say that?"
Rigel smiled, "Some would say it's a way to keep idiots from playing around with potions if they don't understand them, but they forget they're writing a textbook for school kids, and the ones who don't understand the text have to try and make the potions anyway, so really they're just causing more problems by being unclear."
Millicent shook her head, "You should write a translation of the textbook for normal, not obsessed with all things dried and pickled, people. You'd probably make a killing."
Rigel laughed softly, "If you say so. Was there anything else you needed help with?"
"Well, five minutes ago I would have said yes, but you actually just answered a lot my questions by explaining the proportionality thing," Millicent said, looking down at her sheet, "I think I can do the rest myself, now, but thanks for your help."
"Anytime," Rigel said easily.
"Do you really mean that?" Millicent asked bluntly, "Or are you just being polite?"
Rigel raised her eyebrows, "I mean it. Do I really seem like the kind of person who wouldn't help out his friends?"
Millicent shrugged, and Theo put in hesitantly from across the table, "It's just that you're so closed-mouthed about everything. It seems like you don't like sharing your knowledge very much."
Rigel shook her head, "It's not that. I just don't want to come off like I'm flaunting it, you know, showing off or something. I'd feel really rude going around spouting off things I know all the time, even if I was well-meaning."
Theo shook his head wryly, "And here we were thinking it would be rude to ask you to help."
"We're not trying to use you for your talent, of course," Millicent said hurriedly, "If there was something I could teach you in return, I would, but…"
"But you always know everything already," Draco cut in with a smirk from behind his Herbology textbook, "And anything you don't know, you probably aren't interested in, or you would know it."
Rigel nearly laughed. "That's what you think? There are tons of things I wish I knew. Things that you guys take for granted, probably. My dad isn't big on pureblood traditions, so I don't know anything about wizarding history father back than the last couple of decades, for instance. I don't know etiquette, or how to play any musical instruments, while Pansy over here can play three. And look at my handwriting—it's pathetic compared to Millicent's."
"But that's all boring stuff," Theo said. "You never need help with the kind of things we need help with—school work and such."
"To you it's boring," Rigel shrugged, "Do you know what I'd give to have grown up learning Latin like you did, Theo? That's really useful."
"It's not that great," Theo shrugged modestly.
"In any case, I need help with my studies all the time," Rigel told them.
"Anything we can help with?" Pansy asked curiously, and perhaps a bit hopefully.
"Well," Rigel said slowly, "Do any of you study Runes? I got really interested in them over the summer, but the books in the Library are too advanced for me to start with, and I didn't think to buy the third year beginner's textbook."
One by one, everyone in the group turned to look at Blaise. The dark-skinned boy smiled slyly, as if to say, Who, me?
"You know Runes, Blaise?" Rigel asked curiously.
"Since I was very young," Blaise shrugged gracefully, "My mother is a Runes Mistress, and she taught me well before I started Hogwarts. It's not unlike your study of potions, in fact; because there is no magic involved in just learning the theory and the more basic formulas, it was easy enough to learn before getting a wand."
"That's amazing," Rigel said honestly, "Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about them? I can wait until you're done with your homework, of course."
Blaise shrugged once more, "I was finished a while ago. I just hung around to see how the bet turned out. Sure, I'll help. In return you will teach me linked transfigurations, deal?"
Rigel nodded, "No problem. I'll teach it to you now, if you want, since I don't know how long my questions are going to take."
"I want to learn them, too," Draco decided suddenly, closing his Herbology book with a snap, "Sounds useful."
The second years passes the rest of the afternoon and early evening just like that, trading knowledge and the occasional joke comfortably in the Slytherin common room. They all went to bed early that day, knowing that the following evening they'd be up late celebrating Samhain at the Halloween feast with the rest of the school. As she fell asleep that night, Rigel sent up a tiny, half-hearted prayer that this year's feast would not be nearly so eventful as the previous year's. Just don't let anyone try to poison me this time, she asked. Anything but an assassination attempt she could probably handle.
Right?
[HpHpHp]
[end of chapter five].
A/N: Well, that's all for now. Next up is Halloween—and we all know that's never good for Harry. So just FYI and to give credit where due, the first prank with the chimes was directly stolen by yours truly by a really awesome Naruto fanfic that I can't remember the name of, but in which Iruka was a pranking daredevil. So, I definitely do not claim that idea as mine. If you ever come a across the story in your readings, it's really quite good. The second prank is based off of the recent Christmas tradition that you might know if you have brothers and sisters young enough to have done it in the last few years. It's called Elf on the Shelf. So that's really all I have for now. Grad school is going well, in case anyone cares about my pathetic life lol, and hopefully now that I've settled into the pace I can get more writing done. In any case, much love.
-Violet